Magic Steps

by Tamora Pierce

  “I think I’m stuck in it,” Pasco squeaked as Yazmín eased back from him.

  “Soon you’ll be able to do this,” she said, and swept her legs out farther still, until they formed a straight line with her body.

  Pasco gulped.

  Sandry heard a smothered noise from Oama, and looked down at her. The guard was chuckling.

  “You’ll also learn to do this.” Keeping her legs apart, Yazmín lowered her body until she was facedown on the floor, her arms extended before her. “Now you try.”

  Pasco leaned forward gingerly, stretching out his arms. He rested his elbows on the floor.

  Yazmín stood. She walked around behind Pasco. “Does that hurt?”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, it should,” she informed him, and thrust down on his back with her palms. Pasco dipped several inches closer to the floor with a whimper. Without taking the pressure from his back, Yazmín leaned down and yelled, “You want to dance? Work for it!” She took her hands away. “Sit up.” He obeyed. She thrust him down again. “Dip. Sit up. Dip. Admire the sanding we did on this floor. It’s splinter-free. Nice wood grain, don’t you think? Sit up. Dip. I want you doing these exercises at home. If you don’t, believe me, I’ll know. That’s enough for now — ten of these stretches at night. Get up.”

  Pasco winced as he pulled his legs together. “That hurt.”

  “Good,” Yazmín said heartlessly. “Stand up. Touch your toes — don’t bend your knees. Touch ’em, boy!”

  She worked him for an hour, forcing him to bend his body in a number of painful ways. When a girl in pink ran in demanding that Yazmín come to settle an argument, Yazmín gave Pasco a corked flask and a drying cloth. “Breathe,” she ordered, and left with the girl.

  Pasco staggered over to Sandry. “She’s a monster,” he gasped. He worked the cork out of the flask and drank greedily. “A pretty, tiny, squeaky-voiced monster with muscles like a smith’s.”

  Yazmín soon returned, a fiddler in tow. “Now, let’s see you dance,” she told Pasco. He glared at her, then lurched to the center of the floor.

  Sandry got up. “Wait,” she said. “Any dancing, he’s got to be warded. We don’t want what he does getting loose.” She sent Kwaben and Oama to watch the door as the fiddler sat in the corner. Sandry created a circle big enough that Pasco and Yazmín could stay inside without having to worry about breaking the protection on the room.

  For the next hour they reviewed common dances, ones Sandry had watched all her life without knowing that they had names or meanings. One dance was called “Dodging the Provost,” another, “Bird in the Hand,” a third, “Gathering Flowers.” In that one the dancer skipped in a ring, plucking imaginary flowers from the air. Sandry thought Pasco might use that gesture to pull his runaway power back into himself. She wrote the idea down in the small book she now carried for just such thoughts.

  While the boy danced, Yazmín had her eye on him, as well as her hands. She hovered, straightening his back, forcing an arm into a more graceful curve, putting more thrust into his spins. “Get your feet up!” she yelled. “It’s a skip, not a shuffle. Show me air under your toes!”

  When the Guildhall clock struck the noon hour, Yazmín called a halt. Pasco’s hair and shirt were soaked in sweat. “I’ve never worked so hard in my life.”

  “That’s what being a dancer is.” Yazmín’s dark eyes were kind and firm. “For you it’s twice a problem. It isn’t just what you do to survive, it’s your power. And look at you. You’re a fresh youngster, not an old lady like me, but—” She twirled seven times on the ball of one foot, lowered herself into a split, then raised herself again without once bending her knees. She leaned back until she could put her weight on her palms, raised her body into a handstand, then a split, then let her weight fall until she stood again. “I can do all that,” she continued, breathing a little hard, “after chasing my lot all morning and getting you to stretch a bit.”

  Sandry took up her warding, trying not to smile. It really was too bad Yazmín wasn’t a mage. If she had been, Sandry would have turned Pasco over to her without a qualm.

  She was just putting her thread away when the lad Wamuko appeared in the door: he seemed to be the school herald. “His grace Duke Vedris,” he announced, and the duke walked in. Yazmín curtsied as deeply as she had for Sandry, giving the illusion of wide, sweeping skirts when she had none. The fiddler, Pasco, and the guards all bowed.

  Sandry grinned as the duke kissed her cheek. “I’d hoped you might still be here,” he commented, “and since I was in the city on business, I thought we might take midday together.” He bowed to Yazmín. “You are welcome to join us, Mistress Yazmín. The food at the Bountiful Inn is very good, and I would be honored to act as escort to you both.”

  Yazmín smiled at him. “If I may have a few minutes to change out of these things, your grace?”

  He bowed again. “Please, take all the time you need.”

  Yazmín looked at Pasco, then at Sandry. “This meditation study you do before you come to me — if you like, I can save a room for you. That way you don’t have to meet someplace, have one lesson, and then come here.”

  Sandry looked at Pasco. “What do you think?”

  “Whatever you say, lady,” Pasco replied, subdued.

  “Then get here at nine tomorrow. We’ll meditate before your dance lesson,” Sandry ordered. As Yazmín and the fiddler left, Sandry added, “Remember to do those exercises tonight, before you get too stiff.”

  “I’m not stiff at all, lady,” Pasco replied. “I’m weak as an overcooked noodle. Pray excuse me while I crawl home.”

  “A hot bath will help,” Sandry pointed out as Pasco bowed first to the duke, then to her.

  “Oh, good — a way to drown myself before I have another morning like this one.” Pasco lurched out of the classroom.

  “A message came for you from Master Wulfric just before I left the Citadel,” the duke told Sandry. He gave her a piece of folded paper.

  Sandry read it quickly:

  Lady Sandrilene, greetings. I have read your note with regard to the unmagic that will be at Jamar Rokat’s death scene and that of his brother. I have sent Behazin and Ulrina to cleanse the street where Qasam Rokat was slain, since it is a public place. Keep in mind I cannot easily spare them, because drawing blood from the unmagic I presently have and preparing it for tracker spells is complicated work. Since Rokat House itself is locked and under guard with no one allowed in, I trust you will understand if we take care of tracking first, then cleanse Rokat House.

  Your servant, Wulfric Snaptrap.

  “Is everything all right?” the duke asked.

  Sandry folded the note up with a sigh. “I’m just being silly, Uncle. Master Wulfric has everything in hand.”

  The duke might have pressed her about it, but just then Yazmín returned. She had changed into a crimson silk gown in the Yanjing style, made high at the neck and fitted to her body perfectly from shoulders to hips. She’d also done her hair so that curls tumbled out from under a shimmering gauze veil. The duke bowed over her hand, complimenting the dancer on so beautiful a change in so short a time.

  “Performers learn how to dress quickly, your grace,” explained Yazmín with an impish smile.

  Even an ill wind blows some good, as Tris always says, thought Sandry as they walked down the street toward the inn. Pasco may drive me crazy, but I never would have met Yazmín if not for him.

  She would light a stick of incense to Yanna the healer goddess, who was also the goddess of love. If the duke was paying attention to a lovely and spirited dancer, he might not spend so much time on paperwork or on worrying about murderers who seemed to walk through walls.

  That night the dream began with Sandry in darkness up to her chin. She fought to keep it out of her face, but now she could feel unmagic seep through her very pores. She jumped out of bed and stumbled to the window. Leaning out into the cool night air, she gasped for breath.

 
Only when she was thoroughly chilled did she turn to sit inside her room. There was no sense in rushing back into a nightmare. Instead she got her notebook, ink, and brush pen. Pasco’s bitter words about magic that did nothing to arrest criminals had been rattling about her head all day. So had the thought that stitch witches ought to be able to help provost’s mages. She needed spells that would make her and her student feel they were of some use in this tangle.

  The next morning Wamuko greeted Sandry and Pasco at the door when they arrived and showed them a tiny, empty room in the third story where they could meditate without interruption. At least Sandry could have done so. Pasco’s inability to concentrate during their first lessons was nothing compared to his lack of attention now. Even though no classes were held on this floor, the noises made downstairs seeped under the door and through the floorboards. Pasco couldn’t sit still: when Sandry caught him beating time to a faint tin whistle tune, she cast her magic more strongly into her wards, until no sound came in.

  Now Pasco grumbled about the tailor’s seat they normally used to meditate. Here at least she understood the problem. His muscles, unused to the intense work of the day before, ached. She sighed and told Pasco to sit in whichever fashion was most comfortable. After trying several positions, he decided that being flat on his back worked the best. He lay down as she began to count their breathing. As she counted, she let her voice fade, until they could breathe in the correct rhythm silently.

  A minute or two went by without a twitch or fidget from the boy. Just as Sandry began to relax, Pasco yelped “Cramp!” He sat up, rubbing a calf muscle.

  She sighed, and drew a thread from her purse. She tied it, imagining leg muscle around it, then undid her knot. Pasco gasped. “It just stopped!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t think that cramp would ever—” He looked at Sandry, and saw the thread in her fingers. “Lady?” he asked.

  “Would you at least try to concentrate?” she begged him. “I was ten when I learned. Ten. You’re twelve.”

  “Sorry, Lady Sandry,” he mumbled. “I’ll try. Really, I will.”

  They struggled through another half hour. Sandry was not sure which of them was more grateful when the Guildhall clock chimed ten.

  “Well?” demanded Yazmín from the doorway once Sandry had gathered up her warding. “How do you feel today, Pasco?”

  “Terrible,” he said, approaching her warily.

  She beamed. “Just what I’d hoped! Come on, and we’ll do some stretches.”

  “Oh, good,” Pasco mumbled as he followed her outside. “I like stretches.”

  Other students awaited them when they reached a second-floor classroom, all Pasco’s age or a little older. Yazmín led the group through the same exercises she had taught Pasco the day before.

  “At least he gets to see her torturing others the same way,” Oama told Sandry quietly before she took up a watch-post outside the classroom.

  Sandry giggled. Once she was settled on a bench, however, she concentrated on her notes. Awake before dawn, she had been staring at the harbor waters when she remembered the fishing fleet, about to sail after the day’s catch. That had reminded her of Pasco’s dance with the net, and that thought in turn had sent all kinds of ideas tumbling through her head. It had been all she could do to write them down then; now she studied them. Could a dance to call fish to nets be changed to call humans to harriers? She would love to ask the Winding Circle mages about that.

  Yazmín’s voice broke into her thoughts. “My lady? Don’t you have to do that thing with the thread?”

  Sandry warded the room to keep Pasco’s magic contained. Then she returned to her study of her notes. Maybe she ought to take a closer look at that special net they had used for Pasco’s dance while she was at it.

  Once again, Duke Vedris arrived at the school just as the city’s clocks struck twelve. He invited Sandry — and Yazmín — to take midday with him. Following them out of the school, Sandry thought, If he keeps doing this, I absolutely must find an excuse to leave them alone.

  10

  The next day as Sandry, the duke, and Yazmín were finishing their meal at the Bountiful Inn, the door to their private room opened.

  “Your grace, I tried to stop him!” protested the girl who had waited on them, trying to halt the intruder.

  It was Wulfric Snaptrap. “And I told you I don’t care if he’s with an assembly of gods, I need to talk to him!” Bowing apologetically to the duke, he said, “Actually, to the lady.” He nodded to Sandry.

  She instantly rose. “I’m just finished, Master Snaptrap,” she said. “Uncle, Yazmín, you will excuse me?”

  Not waiting for an answer, she grabbed Wulfric and propeled him from the room in front of her. “I hope you didn’t have anything drastic to say to Uncle as well, or if you do, you can say it in a note,” she told Wulfric quietly. “I was looking for a polite way to leave. Of course, I really am at your service.”

  He looked down at her, eyebrows raised. “All I have to report to his grace is failure, and he never likes to hear about that. Do you think he’s interested in Mistress Yazmín?”

  “I devoutly hope so,” replied Sandry. She steered him into the common room and sat at a table, pulling him down beside her. “Otherwise they’ll think I’ve run mad. How goes the tracking?”

  Wulfric propped his elbows on his knees and sighed. “It doesn’t,” he told Sandry, glum. “That blood’s so tainted with unmagic that it’s barely human anymore. We labored two straight days without a thing to show for it.”

  “Cat dirt,” whispered Sandry, thumping her knees with her fists. “Cat dirt, cat dirt!”

  “I use stronger words,” Wulfric told her. “If only I could do something with all that unmagic we collected! There’s what we took from Qasam Rokat’s, and what my assistants brought from Fariji Rokat’s, all nicely bottled, and there’s not a thing I can do with it. Winding Circle still hasn’t told me how to dispose of it safely, either.” He ran his fingers through his gray curls. “My assistants are getting some rest. I thought if you were still willing, we might at least clean up Rokat House. So I’ll feel I did something this week besides twiddle my thumbs.”

  “I know what you mean,” Sandry assured him. “I would love to help.” The night before, she’d had another dream of drowning in shadows. Maybe cleansing Rokat House would make her stop feeling powerless. “Have you enough supplies?”

  “I brought plenty,” Wulfric assured her. “Even if we run into a pond of the stuff.” Sandry shuddered as he led her out of the inn and into the courtyard. Kwaben and Oama were there already with Sandry’s mare; one of the hostlers held Wulfric’s bony cob. “There’s more news I didn’t want to give his grace,” he admitted as they mounted their horses. “The house-to-house search turned up three suspicious characters in East District. Looks like they had a healer up to see to one of them. They murdered the healer and the healer’s guard, then set a fire to cover their escape. I’ll let Captain Qais tell the duke about that mess.” He flipped a coin to the hostler.

  “If you could have used the blood to track them it wouldn’t matter that they fled the inn?” Sandry guessed.

  “Exactly,” Wulfric replied as they rode through the gate. “But without even the blood to help, and with them getting away clean like that … His grace is fair, but I think I’ll steer clear of him until I have some real progress to report.”

  What they had forgotten was that it was Lovers’ Day. Long, long before, a noble maiden and a cobbler had drowned themselves rather than let their families marry them to others. For some reason their festival was marked by music, dancing, and a parade. Sandry’s group had to muscle through the crowds. The din was worst in front of Rokat House itself, where the parade was passing.

  The Provost’s Guards on watch stood aside for Wulfric. He voiced the words that would break the magical seal on the door, though the sound was lost in the bang of cymbals and drums. When the wax seal crumbled away — the sign the magical seal had broken — Wulfric,
Sandry, and Sandry’s bodyguards walked inside and closed the door behind them.

  It was pitch dark in the entryway — no lamps had been lit. Sandry pulled her lightstone out so they could see. Its glow revealed smutches of darkness on the stairs, on the wall, and on the railing. Holding the stone up, she could see more smutches along the hall that led to the rear of the building on the ground floor. She guessed the killers had escaped that way on the morning they killed Jamar Rokat.

  Even with a wall between them and the parade, it was still hard for her to hear what the provost’s mage was saying. Finally Wulfric put his mouth beside her ear. “Let’s start with the worst of it this time, shall we?” He pointed upstairs.

  Sandry nodded. She warned Oama and Kwaben to stay in the middle of the stair, and to sit on or touch noting until she had told them they could. They nodded their understanding. Sandry and Wulfric each hoisted a pack of the supplies that Wulfric had brought for the job, and began to climb.

  Unbelievably, the noise was louder yet upstairs. Someone had left the shutters open on a window that overlooked the street from the hall.

  Wulfric draped a silk square over his hand and opened the outer office door. “Ready?” he asked as he thrust it open.

  She nodded and followed him, preoccupied with noting each and every place she could see unmagic smears. We’ll be at this till nightfall, she thought ruefully as she waited for Wulfric to undo the seal on the room where Jamar Rokat had died. Once that was done, he stepped inside and halted. Sandry almost walked into his back. She frowned, reached to tap his shoulder — and Wulfric fell forward. Kwaben grabbed Sandry and yanked her away, into the outer office. She went down with a surprised cry.